Incompetent Elected Officials

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Worse than Joe "You Lie!" Wilson; worse than Allan "The Republicans want you to die!" Grayson. Will anyone say so?

Many Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have specifically stated in the past that they have no interest in budget-balancing issues, and that their primary and over-riding objective is to keep government money flowing to their neediest constituents. That’s a narrow and irresponsible position, but defensible if your view of the duty of elected representatives is that they are only advocates for the voters who elect them, and not bound by any obligation to national welfare  as a whole. Even if one accepts this approach (shared by many in the Tea Party), it does not excuse executing that advocacy by stirring up race hatred with diatribes attributing monstrous and unjustified motivations to political adversaries.

In other words, it doesn’t excuse slanderous comments like these about the Tea Party and its adherents, issuing like flaming vomit from the uncivil mouth of Rep. Andre Carson:

“This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me… hanging on a tree. Some of them right now in Congress right now are comfortable with where we were fifty or sixty years ago. But it’s a new day with a black president and a Congressional Black Caucus.”

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Michele Bachmann

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I think Hurricane Irene was sent by God to help the Red Sox. Hear me out! It makes mores sense than Michele's theory!

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

—-Rep. Michele Bachmann, GOP presidential hopeful and shameless demagogue, joining the discredited ranks of Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck and others to assert that weather conditions constitute proof that God agrees with her.

You can read my views on this arrogant, manipulative species of idiocy here, here and here.  I’ve written about it too much, and as an American living in the 21st Century, I’m embarrassed that I should have to write about it at all. Continue reading →

Ethics Bulletin To Camden, New Jersey: Money Isn’t The Solution To Everything

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Just pay him to come to school, and he'll be a model student. No, really!

It’s not that surprising that the people who run the city of Camden think that money is the panacea to every problem. After all, that is the predominant message sent by our leaders in Washington, the media and the popular culture. Still, Camden’s new policy of  rewarding selected high school students $100 each to go to school in the first three weeks of the year displays ethical obtuseness rare even for school systems.

The idea is to fight truancy with a new program called I Can End Truancy (ICE-T). To receive their promised C-note, each of 66 targeted students must attend classes as well as conflict-resolution and anger-management workshops for the first three weeks of school. “We had talked about it [truancy] for a long time,” Camden Mayor Dana Redd told reporters. “We wanted to come up with an innovative model.” The required state minimum attendance rate is 90 percent, and Camden is threatening to miss it. After all, it’s the statistics that count, not whether the students actually pay attention in school, or learn anything. If this plan doesn’t work, presumably Camden will bring the required number of children to school at gunpoint, and drug them unconscious until the bell sounds. Continue reading →

To the Pro-Obama Race-Baiters: “Have You No Sense of Decency at All?”

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Ah, if only Joseph Welch and his well-aimed indignation were here today!

We knew, way back when President Obama was running for his first term, that the temptation to paint any opposition to his leadership or his policies as proof of racism would be irresistible  for the less ethical among his supporters in the Democratic Party and among the media. This came to pass, but we should prepare for much worse.  Now that the President has a thoroughly wretched record and is, to an extent I personally haven’t seen since the paranoid days of Richard Nixon, attempting to avoid accountability by blaming everyone in sight—a thoroughly unleaderly display—the race-baiters have served notice that they will be out in force this time as well, more shameless than ever. Continue reading →

Texas Gov. Rick Perry: Ethics Hero REVOKED, Integrity Missing

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow, that was fast.

Rick Perry has Jenny McCarthy's vote back...and that's worth a little more cervical cancer, right Governor?

It didn’t take long for newly-minted GOP presidential contender Rick Perry, now leading in the polls, to tell us what we needed to know about his values and integrity.

He doesn’t have them.

Back in 2007, I awarded Perry an Ethics Hero designation for leading Texas to become the first state in the nation to mandate vaccination of young girls for the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is sexually transmitted and can cause cervical cancer. “Requiring young girls to get vaccinated before they come into contact with HPV is responsible health and fiscal policy that has the potential to significantly reduce cases of cervical cancer and mitigate future medical costs,” Perry said then in a news release explaining his executive order. Now, however, Perry is declaring what I thought was a courageous decision four years ago “a mistake.”

I hereby revoke his Ethics Hero award. Continue reading →

The Disgrace of the Health Care Reform Debacle, Brought Into Focus

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Nice image. Unfortunately, the open book is "Catch 22"

“Some prominent academics have argued that the individual mandate is a clearly constitutional exercise of the federal government’s taxing power. Some of these same academics have argued that opponents of the individual mandate’s constitutionality are well outside the legal mainstream. Yet as of today, there has not been a single federal court — indeed, perhaps not even a single federal judge — who has accepted the taxing power argument. Not a one. And yet a half-dozen federal judges have found the mandate to be unconstitutional. So which arguments are outside of the mainstream again?”

Thus did Jonathan Adler, Case Western law professor and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation, chide the arrogant supporters of the health care reform act who dismissed as wackos and radicals critics who were alarmed at its intrusions onto personal freedom. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of the individual mandate, the provision requiring all adult citizens to buy private health insurance, is the most striking proof yet of the arrogant, unethical, dishonest, corrupt and incompetent manner in which the Democratic majority passed its version of health care reform. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day #3 on “Ethics Dunces: The Senate and House Leadership”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Come back, Ross! We need your charts!

The third Comment of the Day on this “Comment of the Day Friday” is an epic from Michael, expanding on the theme of my original post.

“I hate the fact that no one is talking facts, only ideology. In such an atmosphere, these selections make sense. The S&P statement said our downgrade was because we failed to tacked long-term indebtedness especially the main drivers of long-term debt: Medicare and SS, but no one really wants to deal with that. To talk facts, you really need some tables, figures, and analysis. I’m not just talking about politicians, here. Isn’t this the reason we tolerate the media? Aren’t they supposed to keep us informed of about things like this so we can then get outraged by such a stupid selection of people to ‘fix’ our problem.

“Why can’t we find a news outlet that will break things down like this?” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Senate and House Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The names are in.

As part of the pathetic, cynical and inadequate budget deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, Republicans and Democrats were called upon to assemble a bi-partisan “super committee” of twelve House members and Senators, chosen by the respective leaders from both parties, to come up with a way to close the deficit. Now that the S&P ratings downgrade has embarrassed the nation, destabilized foreign markets and sent an unambiguous message that the United States has to get serious about balancing the books and fast, have our political leaders responded to the challenge by choosing elected representatives of states and districts who have track records of collaboration, political courage, truthtelling and placing the best interests of the nation over narrow electoral fundraising and ideological objectives?

Naaa.

What, are you surprised? The leaders of the House and Senate have met our lowest expectations, and have chosen a hyper-partisan group to make up the super committee, guaranteeing that it will be super-contentious and super-ineffective. The degree to which this represents an abdication of their duties of leadership and responsible government is impossible to exaggerate. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A symptom and a cause

“You name it, they’re there to diminish it, destroy it.”

—-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), quoted in the Washington Post today, describing the Republican Party.

If you listen to talk radio, as I, unfortunately, must, you hear statements like Pelosi’s all the time. Conservative talk show host Mark Levin, for example, will say, every day, usually more than once, loudly, that liberals/Democrats/ Obama “want to destroy America.” (Then he plugs his book. Or says, “Just like identity thieves want to destroy your credit!” and does an ad for “Lifelock.”)  It is irresponsible, hateful and ignorant for Levine (and Rush, and Monica Crowley, and lots of others) to make this and similar statements, though in Levine’s case, at least, not insincere, for he clearly believes every bit of it.

These are just talk show hosts, however. They are at least 50% entertainers, and 100% partisans, though they still have ethical duties of honesty, fairness, civility and responsibility which they regularly toss to the winds in the interest of ratings. They don’t meet their profession’s ethical standards, even though those standards are  low.

Pelosi’s are much, much higher, for she is an elected official of the United States of America. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Tennessee State Rep.Joe Armstrong

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

SEDITION!

In a “who most deserves to have to resign?” contest between Tennessee State Rep. Joe Armstrong and sexting New Jersey County Commissioner Louis Magazzu,  Armstrong wins by a lap. The University of Tennessee bookstore has pulled a brand of novelty breath mints from its shelves, in compliance with a request from Armstrong, a loyal and incompetent Democrat. The mints  lampooned President Obama. They were packaged in tin cans with an  image of Obama and the motto, “This is change? Disappoint-mints.” The horror.

Armstrong said that the mints were offensive. Oh weally? Izzums wittle feewings wounded because evewyone doesn’y wuv your bewuvved weader? Continue reading →